Chad L. Aldis commentary: Students not bound for college need career options, too

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Tuesday March 11, 2014 5:54 AM

Kudos to Gov. John Kasich for promoting a greater focus on career and technical education in his
recent State of the State address. But don’t expect him to earn many plaudits from the education
community — or even from education reformers — because unfortunately, his common-sense suggestion
is more controversial than it should be.

It’s a simple idea on its face. Let’s take students who are disengaged, struggling and likely to
drop out of school, and let’s give them another pathway to success — one that will develop
marketable skills and lead to decent-paying jobs. Who could disagree with that?

Yet it’s become an article of faith in some corners that we should be striving to prepare all
students for success in college. The rationale is somewhat compelling; as a recent Pew study
reiterated, people who graduate with a bachelor’s degree earn significantly more than those who do
not. To “settle” for a route that doesn’t include college has somehow been equated with killing the
American dream. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The American dream isn’t a college degree. It’s about climbing the economic ladder and providing
a better life for your children. Career and technical education will help many more people achieve
the dream — not diminish it.

Here’s a stark fact: fewer than 10 percent of poor children now graduate with four-year college
degrees. Even if all of our education-reform efforts worked and that rate tripled, two-thirds or
more of our low-income youngsters would need a path other than college to improve their lives and
gain access to the middle class.

Critics inevitably will suggest that a noncollege option for students will lead to “tracking”
and limiting a student’s educational options. That would be true if the career-tech pathway was
forced upon students, but that doesn’t appear to be what Kasich is contemplating. He’s talking
about exposing students at younger ages to the possibility of career and technical education,
helping them to learn about the career road maps for various occupations, increasing the number of
opportunities to combine jobs and learning, and letting students choose the path to follow.

Increased knowledge about career options and an early exposure to those options opens doors for
students rather than closing them.

Let’s see how this plays out from a student’s perspective. Imagine that you’re finishing ninth
grade at a large comprehensive high school. The year hasn’t gone very well; because you are reading
and doing math at a sixth-grade level, much of your coursework is a struggle. You are foundering,
failing courses and thinking about dropping out.

A rational system would acknowledge that, with just three years until graduation, the likelihood
of you getting to a true “college-readiness” level by the end of 12 {+t}{+h} grade is extremely
low. Even if all the pieces come together in dramatic fashion — you get serious help with your
basic skills, someone finds you a great mentor, your motivation for hitting the books increases
significantly — you probably aren’t going to make it. You need another pathway, one where you have
a significantly greater chance of success and a real payoff at the end — a job that will allow you
to be self-sufficient. High-quality career and technical education that combines rigorous
coursework with a real-world apprenticeship, and maybe even a paycheck, could be that pathway.

To be sure, your long-term earnings probably will be lower than if you squeak out a college
degree. But that’s a false choice, because you’re almost surely not going to get that college
degree anyway. The decision is whether to follow the college route to almost certain failure or to
follow another route to significant success.

Yet we encourage many students to follow the academic track — and even go to college — even if
they are vastly unprepared. Unhappily, that almost never ends well.

Kasich is right to challenge the dogma around “college for all.” Our students deserve more than
a one-size-fits-all approach to education. They deserve the opportunity that high-quality career
and technical education options offer.

Chad L. Aldis is vice president for Ohio policy and advocacy at the Thomas B. Fordham
Institute.